Have you ever struggled to focus in a learning environment or had trouble wrapping your head around a new concept?
What’s the Big Deal About Learning?
“Our whole lives, we’ve been expected to learn,” said Jay Shetty. “We’ve been expected to learn fast. We’ve been expected to learn so we can have exams. We have to learn so that we can have a job … but we never learn how to learn.”
Shetty flips the script in this episode by explaining the disadvantages of not learning instead of the benefits of learning. Why? Often, learning about the negatives, and what might go wrong, motivates us more than learning the positives. We want a good outcome for ourselves and others, and the knowledge and fear of something going wrong drives us to get it right.
“Learning cuts right through that,” said Jay Shetty. “Learning is about movement. Learning is momentum learning. It’s about pushing forward. And so the antidote to boredom is actually learning… it’s dangerous to your health to not learn.”
Yet the older we get, the less often we learn.
“Think about the last time you learned something new,” said Jay Shetty. “Think about the last time you learned something for the first time. It’s rare that we continue to learn, and yet there is such a need for us to learn every single day, from our careers to our relationships.”
“The problem is, as we get older, we learn much less frequently,” said Jay Shetty. “When we were at school, we learned every day. Then if you went to college or started a new job, you were learning every day. But as we get older and older and older, we actually stop learning.”
What If Learning Isn’t Fun?
When Shetty was younger, learning wasn’t fun. He didn’t enjoy reading and couldn’t get into the books the other kids enjoyed. Since he associated reading with learning, he assumed he just didn’t like to learn.
This isn’t an unusual occurrence. Many children struggle through school, dread going to class, experience conflict with teachers … but what if it’s not because they don’t like learning? What if it’s because they were meant to learn in a different way – a way that schools weren’t designed to provide?
“School was not built for different learning styles,” said Jay Shetty. “Just in the same way people write differently, just in the same way people speak differently, just in the same way people think differently, guess what? People learn differently.”
Have you ever stopped to think about your learning style? If not, it’s time! When you understand your learning style, you’ll learn better, remember more, apply more, and be able to make more of a difference with what you learn.
The Four Learning Styles
There are four different learning styles, described in a 1992 study by Neil D. Fleming and Colleen Mills.2 Understanding your personal learning style can help you stay engaged as a learner.
